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Xcell journal
PUBLISHER Mike Santarini
mike.santarini@xilinx.com
408-879-5270
EDITOR Jacqueline Damian
ART DIRECTOR Scott Blair
DESIGN/PRODUCTION Teie, Gelwicks & Associates
1-800-493-5551
ADVERTISING SALES Dan Teie
1-800-493-5551
xcelladsales@aol.com
INTERNATIONAL Melissa Zhang, Asia Pacific
melissa.zhang@xilinx.com
Xilinx, Inc.
2100 Logic Drive
San Jose, CA 95124-3400
Phone: 408-559-7778
FAX: 408-879-4780
www.xilinx.com/xcell/
Christelle Moraga, Europe/
Middle East/Africa
christelle.moraga@xilinx.com
Yumi Homura, Japan
yumi.homura@xilinx.com
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© 2008 Xilinx, Inc. All rights reserved. XILINX,
the Xilinx Logo, and other designated brands included
herein are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. All other trademarks
are the property of their respective owners.
The articles, information, and other materials included
in this issue are provided solely for the convenience of
our readers. Xilinx makes no warranties, express,
implied, statutory, or otherwise, and accepts no liability
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might have against Xilinx for any loss, damage, or
expense caused thereby.
L E T T E R F R O M T H E P U B L I S H E R
Happy 20th Anniversary, Xcell Journal Readers!
T
wenty years ago this quarter, an applications engineer who had just joined Xilinx from
AMD, with prior stints at Zilog and Fairchild, started a technical publication for Xilinx customers.
He named it Xcell, “The Newsletter for Xilinx Programmable Gate Array Users.”
Two decades later, that Xilinx legend, Peter Alfke, says he fashioned Xcell Journal after
Fairchild’s now defunct magazine Progress. “In those days, FPGAs were a really new and unconventional
technology, and we wanted to tell designers how to best use them,” said Alfke. “We used to
issue Data Books once a year—this was, of course, before the Internet. So we decided to make Xcell
Journal a quarterly applications update with a lot of technical detail, how-to content and innovative
ideas, as well as silicon, tools and IP availability information.”
Peter and his daughter Karen, at the time a Berkeley student, created the debut issue of Xcell in
the fourth quarter of 1988. “She brought her Mac down to the office and she did the typesetting
and layout for the first five issues,” said Alfke.
The lead story reported on the company’s new Data Book, which contained complete data
sheets for the XC2000 and XC3000 device families and for a military-grade version of the XC2000.
Issue No. 1 also featured an article on DOS (“All DOS Are Not Created Equal”) and several pieces
on the XACT FPGA design tool, the ISE ® of its day. One story described XACT as “a large,
demanding program, using interactive graphics, requiring megabytes of RAM”—a behemoth that
pushed the IBM-PC, which at the
time could address only 640
kbytes, “into uncharted water.”
These older issues are fun to
read, and not just for the sake of
nostalgia. Alfke, still at Xilinx and
still involved in applications and
technical documentation, points
out that some of the content
remains fresh and somewhat useful
today. So, instead of blabbing
about how Xcell has evolved over
time, I’d like to honor the guy who
started an amazing legacy that we
hope to continue for at least another
20 years. At right are Peter’s Picks
of the best of the oldies but goodies
from issues 1 through 28.
Pack rats will have no problem
laying hands on them. For anyone
who didn’t save every issue that
came your way, we’re in the process
of placing the content online.
You’ll soon be able to find back
issues at the Xcell Journal Archives
page. In the meantime, if you want
a specific issue, e-mail me at
mike.santarini@xilinx.com with the
heading “Xcell back issue request,”
and I’ll send you an electronic copy.
Mike Santarini
Publisher
Peter’s Picks
#11, 4Q93, page 31: “Reduce SPROM Standby Current to Zero”
by grounding through LDC
#13, 2Q94, page 25: “Carry and Overflow: A Short Tutorial”
#17, 2Q95, page 30: “Manchester Decoder in Three CLBs”
#18, 3Q95, page 30: “Overshoot and Undershoot”
#18, 3Q95, page 36: “Hold is a Four-Letter Word”—
hold-time, that is
#19, 4Q95, page 34: “User-Defined Schmitt Trigger”
with two pins, two resistors
#21, 2Q96, page 35: “10-Digit Fully Synchronous BCD Counter @ 87 MHz”
#21, 2Q96, page 40: “A Look at Minimum Delays,”
and why they are so elusive
#22, 3Q96, page 28: “Power, Package and Performance”
and how to trade off among them
#24, 1Q97, page 20: “Trouble-Free Switching Between Clocks,”
with no glitches
#24, 1Q97, page 21: “Demultiplexing 200-MHz Data Streams”
#27, 4Q97, page 27: “Reduce EMI with a Spread-Spectrum Clock”
#27, 4Q97, page 28: “The Dangers of Hot Plug-In”
#28, 1Q98, page 22: “PC-Board Design Considerations”
#28, 1Q98, page 28: “Self-Initiated Global Reset”
#28, 1Q98, page 29: “CMOS I/O Characteristics”
#28, 1Q98, page 33: “Low-Power XC4002XL Achieves 400-MHz
Performance” in a self-contained frequency counter